Although I do pray, I must confess that I don’t often think much or think well about my praying. That is, I pray in a kind of “this is how I have always prayed” kind of way, without much reflection on how or why I pray the way I do.
It’s much like what happens with couples, as they settle into patterns of communication. When I counsel couples in conflict, I can often help them uncover ineffective and unproductive ways of relating. And, typically, they don’t really know why they interact the way the do . . . it’s just how they do things.
So, thinking about my praying is good. I could uncover something about how I pray that isn’t the most helpful or productive. And, I might actually end up talking better with the God who invites us into intimacy.
In an earlier post (“Praying the Intended Outcome”), I was reflecting on Paul’s prayer that is found in the first chapter of Colossians. Specifically, I was challenged by the thought that Paul was partnering with God through praying for the kinds of things that God wanted to do. No generic praying for Paul; he was specific and focused in his praying, but praying for what he understood God was intending to do.
And, as I continue to reflect on that short passage, there are a few other thoughts that have been stirring in my mind and heart about prayer.
Paul wrote:
Since the day we heard [of your faith in Christ and love for all the saints], we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 1:9-10)
Now when I think about “the will of God,” I am usually caught up with some sort of specific detail regarding what I think God might want me to do in the immediate future. Like, “Is it the will of God that I trade in my older car for a newer model?” or “I wonder if God wants me to apply for that other job or not?” It is not that such issues are not worth considering–or praying about–but as I listen to Paul I don’t think that is what he had in mind when he was praying that the followers of Jesus would “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will.”
Three times in the first chapter of Colossians, Paul makes reference to the Colossians “knowing” something. In 1:6, Paul refers to their having “understood” (same root word as “knowledge”) “the grace of God in truth.” In 1:10, toward the end of Paul’s prayer, he speaks of his desire for them to continue grow “in the knowledge of God.” Given those references–and the general tenor of what Paul is asking for from God for the Colossians–it seems to me that “to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will” is more about coming to truly grasp what God is “up to” in the world, what his overall amazing intent is, rather than merely getting some of the details about what is supposed to happen to me in the next few days.
Paul was more intent on praying that the Colossians grasp, with mind and heart, what the Gospel was, what God was doing in transforming lives, how God was invading lives to change them through the power of the Spirit and through the message of the cross of Christ, then he was thinking about whether this Colossian saint should sell his leather working business or whether those two young people should wed.
Again, it is not that the details of our lives are unimportant or that we should not bring such matters before God in prayer. But without overlooking those, it seems that what needs to become more and more the center point in my thinking is the huge thing God is doing in the world. I need to get that, and then it will be easier to make sense of the day-to-day things.
Paul wants these followers of Jesus to really grow to understand the living God and what the Lord of life is doing and why . . . and that is what he asks God to do in them.
That’s a perspective, a vantage point for life, that I desperately long to have.
Summathetes 